“A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.”
--Mark Twain, on whether a book is a useful gift
The Roberts Group specializes in book production. Our services include interior design, editing, layout and typesetting, indexing, and proofreading.
We work as an overflow resource for fully staffed publishing companies and as the primary editorial and design consultants for more bare-bones operations. We have helped many first-time self-publishers navigate the tricky waters of book production.
Our philosophy is that every book should be as good as it can be. Here are the book production services we offer:
We create an interior design that complements your subject matter. Our goal is to design a clean, professional look that is a pleasure for your readers and that helps your book compete with the thousands of books introduced every year. This process includes font selection, header and footer design, possible use of sidebars and readouts, and graphic embellishments. (See sample interior designs in PDF format.)
Once we have created a design for your book, we take your copy and format it according to the approved design. At this stage of the process, we are concerned with details. Attention to design and typesetting details separates the quality book from its shabby cousin. The rate for this service depends on the complexity of the layout and your text. As part of layout and typesetting, we create the disk files required by your printer's electronic prepress department.
Yes, people do buy books by their covers. Your cover markets your book. It has to cut through all the noise on the bookstore shelf, intrigue the reader's eye, and demand, not with the squeak of a mouse but the roar of a lion: "Open me." Our artists can work with you to create a compelling cover appropriate to your subject matter. Check out some of our sample covers.
Every book needs professional editing -- and that doesn't mean a stamp of approval from your cousin the lit major or your old college professor. In today's competitive book world, your writing must be the best it can be. And that's what we aim for. We want to take your writing to its highest level while still maintaining your style and personality. We can edit your text on hard copy or electronic file. We can help you rewrite your entire manuscript, or we can just smooth out some of the bumps in the text. The editor's job is to consider organization, analyze sentence structure, and look for typos and inconsistencies. Editing is usually done before layout and typesetting.
Proofreading occurs after layout and typesetting. Proofreading is a quick read designed to catch typos, bad breaks, loose lines, inaccurate headers or footers, and incorrect references to figures or tables.
If you're waffling on whether or not your nonfiction book needs an index, we have one word for you: libraries. Marketing to libraries becomes immensely easier with an index. We create indexes by reading the material and marking index entries in the document. We don't simply search for keywords. Our goal is to create indexes that are useful to the reader.
We can make use of your existing graphic files for illustrations or tables, or we can create illustrations anew. If your book includes photographs, we can scan your prints into the electronic document.
If you'd like to receive a preliminary cost estimate for your book project, please fill out our Book Production Quote Request form, and we'll get back to you with some numbers within a few days. Contact us if you have questions.